Evolution of Programming Languages

Evolution of Programming Languages

Year	Programming Language Developed
Before 1950	The ENIAC coding system was primarily used in computing
1954-54	Fortran "0" was designed by a team at IBM. Fortran Implementation was developed by John Backus at IBM in 1957.
1956-58	John McCarthy came up with the concept of LISP.
1959	COBOL concept came up followed by its implementation that was developed by the Codasyl Committee in 1960. The LISP implementation was developed in 1959. LISP’s successor, Common LISP, came up later in 1984.
1964	IBM came up with PL/I concept. PL/M followed years later in 1972. 1964 also saw the development of BASIC by Kemeny and Kurtz.
1969	Ken Thompson developed the B language.
1970	This was when Pascal was developed.
1972	It was during 1972 that Smalltalk and Prolog were developed. One of the most important events in the history of computing was the development of C language. It was developed by Dennis Ritchie in 1972.
1975	Scheme, the successor of LISP came up in 1975 as also Modula, the successor of Pascal.
1978	SQL was developed at IBM in 1978.
1979	REXX and AWK came up in 1979.
1980-83	C with classes was developed in 1980. Objective-C came up in 1982. 1983 witnessed the development of C++, one of the very popular languages till date.
1985	PostScript and Object Pascal belong to 1985.
1987	Perl that derives some of its features from C, as also from AWK, sed and sh evolved in 1987.
1991	Van Rossum came up with Python. Visual Basic, developed by Alan Cooper, came up in the same year.
1993	Ruby, which is considered a successor of Smalltalk and Perl, came up in 1993.
1994	PHP was born in 1994.
1995	ColdFusion belongs to 1995. It was during this year that James Gosling at Sun Microsystems came up with Java.
1996	Javascript was born in this year. ECMAScript, its successor came up in 1997.
1999	XSLT, a language based on XML by the W3C and the Game Maker Language by Mark Overmars were born in 1999.
2000	The D language and C# came up in 2000.
2006	The development of Windows PowerShell by Microsoft was one of the significant events in computing that took place in 2006.

Evolution of Operating Systems

Evolution of Operating Systems

Year	Event
1954	MIT came up with their operating system for UNIVAC 1103.
1964	Dartmouth timesharing operating system was developed.
1965	Multics was announced. However, it was opened for paying customers in October 1969.
1966	DOS/360 of IBM came up.
1969	This year witnessed the development of the Unix operating system by AT&T.
1976	CP/M was developed during this year.
1980	OS-9 came up in 1980.
1981	This year can be considered fortunate to have witnessed the development of MS-DOS. IBM had hired Paul Allen and Bill Gates to create an operating system in 1980. They used the operating system manufactured by the Seattle Computer Products as a template to develop DOS.
1984	Macintosh operating system came up in this year.
1987	It was during this year that MINIX, BSD2000 and OS/2 were developed.
1988	RISC iX, LynxOS and Macintosh OS (System 6) came up during this year.
1989	This was the time when the RISC operating system was developed.
1991	It was in 1991 that Linux came up. It is a Unix-like operating system, which is a free software. It was during this year that Minix 1.5 was developed and Macintosh came up with System 7.
1992	Solaris, the successor of Sun OS 4.X came up during this year.
1993	Plan 9, FreeBSD, NetBSD and Windows NT 3.1 came up during 1993.
1995	OpenBSD and Microsoft Windows 95 came up during 1995
1996	Windows NT 4.0 hit the computing market in 1996.
1998	1998 witnessed the release of Windows 98 as well of Solaris 7.
2000	Windows 2000, which hit the markets in 2000, was the first Windows server operating system to drop the ‘NT’ suffixed to its name. Windows ME, which was sold during this year, was the last operating system in the Windows 9x line. Red Hat Linux 6.2E also came up during 2000.
2001	Windows XP was launched and soon gained a wide popularity. Windows XP 64-bit edition followed in 2002.
2002	Windows XP Service Pack 1 was released in 2002.
2003	2003 witnessed the launch of the Windows 2003 Server as also the release of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3.
2004	Windows XP Service Pack 2 was released in 2004.
2006	Windows Vista hit the markets
2008	Windows Vista Service Pack 1 and Windows Server 2008 came up in 2008. It was also during this very year that Windows XP Service Pack 3 was released.

Evolution of Computers

2400 BC	Abacus, the first known calculator was invented in Babylonia. It was a major step towards the era of computing that was to follow.
500 BC	Panini, an ancient Indian Sanskrit grammarian came up with the predecessor of the modern formal language theory.
300 BC	Pingala invented the binary number system that serves as the foundation of computing systems the world over.
1614	John Napier designed the system of moveable rods, which used algorithms to perform the basic mathematical operations.
1622	William Oughtred invented slide rules.
1822	Charles Babbage devised the first mechanical computer.
1937	John V. Atanasoff devised the first digital electronic computer
1939	Atanasoff and Clifford Berry came up with the ABC prototype.
1941	The electromechanical Z machines by Konrad Zuse proved being an important step in the evolution of computers.
1943	Colossus, which was able to decode German messages, was designed at Bletchley Park in Britain.
1944	Harvard Mark I, a computer with lesser programmability was designed.
1945	John von Neumann described a stored program architecture, for the first time ever. This architecture was the heart of the computer systems developed thereafter. This architecture, which came to be known as the von Neumann architecture is a part of every computer till today.
1946	The Ballistics Research Laboratory of the United States came up with the Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer (ENIAC). It was the first general purpose electronic computer; but had an inflexible architecture.
1950	The US National Bureau of Standards came up with the Standards Electronic/Eastern Automatic Computer (SEAC). It was the first computer using diodes for handling logic.
1951	Lynos Electronic Office (LEO), the first business computer was developed by John Simmons and T. Raymond Thompson. UNIVAC I, the first commercial computer was designed in the United States by John Presper Eckert and John W. Mauchly. EDVAC, the electronic discrete variable automatic computer was introduced.
1955	Bell Labs introduced its first transistor computer. Transistors made computers energy-efficient.
1958	Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) was formed. This year also witnessed the making of the first silicon chip by Jack Kilby and Robert Noyce.
1968	DEC launched the first mini computer known as PDP-8
1969	The US Department of Defense founded the Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET). It was established with intent to develop a computer network and is the predecessor of the Internet.
1971	Microcomputers came up with microprocessors and Ted Hoff at Intel, introduced 4-bit 4004.
1972	This year witnessed the creation of 8080 microprocessors by Intel.
1973	A minicomputer that was called Xerox Alto was developed during this year. It was an important milestone in the development of personal computers.
1974	Researchers at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center came up with Alto, which was the first workstation with an inbuilt mouse. It had a fair amount of storage capacity and offered menus and icons. It could also connect to a network.
1975	Altair came up with the first portable computer. The foundation of the present-day relationship between portability and computing was laid way back in 1975! Tandem computers, the first computers with online transaction processing capacities were born during this period.
1979	By 1979, more that half a million computers were in use in the United States. This number crossed 10 million by 1983.
1981	The American National Standards Institute (ANSI) was founded. It was during the same year that the first 32-bit chip was introduced by Hewlett-Packard.
1982	Intel announced the 80286 processor.
1983	In this year, the Time magazine nominated personal computer for the title ‘machine of the year’.
1985	Intel introduced the 80386 processor that consists of a 16MHz processor.
1990	The World Wide Web was born. Tim Berners-Lee, a researcher at CERN, developed HTML. He came up with specifications such as URL and HTTP. He based the World Wide Web on enquiry-based system that used hypertext and enabled people to collaborate over a network. His first web server and browser became available to the public.
Till date	The development of newer versions of computer systems continues.

Evolution of Computing Devices

Evolution of Computing Devices

Evolution of Computing Devices

Before 1801

Calculators were the earliest computing devices. They were the only computation tools for long years before the creation of computers.

1801

The years that followed were dominated by the use of punched cards for computing. The users used to submit programming assignments to a computer center using stacks of cards. The programs used to be queued for processing and execution.

1930 - 1960

Desktop mechanical calculators were built during the 1930s. During the 1950s and the ’60s, electronic desktop calculators came up. Analog computational technologies predominated this period.

1940 - 1960 

This span of time witnessed the emergence of the digital computing technology. Zuse Z3, ENIAC and EDSAC were some of the early digital computers.

• First-generation computers were based on the von Neumann architecture.
• The second generation computers were characterized by the replacement of vacuum tube by bipolar transistors. They were composed of printed circuit boards.

After 1960

These years witnessed the development of the third generation computers. They were based on integrated circuits. Computer systems of this period had large storage capacities and high processing powers. Multi-core CPUs became available in the 21st century. Laptops, palmtops, handheld PCs, notebook computers and tablet PCs are popular today. Computer development still continues.

Evolution of Television

Evolution of Television

Television Evolution

1831

Joseph Henry's and Michael Faraday's work with electromagnetism jumpstarts the era of electronic communication.

1862 First Still Image Transferred

Abbe Giovanna Caselli invents his Pantelegraph and becomes the first person to transmit a still image over wires.

1873

Scientists May and Smith experiment with selenium and light, this reveals the possibilty for inventors to transform images into electronic signals.

1876

Boston civil servant George Carey was thinking about complete television systems and in 1877 he put forward drawings for what he called a selenium camera that would allow people to see by electricity.

Eugen Goldstein coins the term "cathode rays" to describe the light emitted when an electric current was forced through a vacuum tube.

Late 1870s

Scientists and engineers like Paiva, Figuier, and Senlecq were suggesting alternative designs for Telectroscopes.

1880

Inventors Alexander Graham Bell and Thomas Edison theorize about telephone devices that transmit image as well as sound.

Bell's Photophone used light to transmit sound and he wanted to advance his device for image sending.

George Carey builds a rudimentary system with light-sensitive cells.

1881

Sheldon Bidwell experiments with his Telephotography that was similiar to Bell's Photophone.

1884 18 Lines of Resolution

Paul Nipkow sends images over wires using a rotating metal disk technology calling it the electric telescope with 18 lines of resolution.

1900 And We Called It Television

At the World's Fair in Paris, the first International Congress of Electricity was held. That is where Russian Constantin Perskyi made the first known use of the word "television."

Soon after 1900, the momentum shifted from ideas and discussions to physical development of television systems. Two major paths in the development of a television system were pursued by inventors.

Inventors attempted to build mechanical television systems based on Paul Nipkow's rotating disks or

electronic television systems based on the cathode ray tube developed independently in 1907 by English inventor A.A. Campbell-Swinton and Russian scientist Boris Rosing.

American Charles Jenkins and Scotsman John Baird followed the mechanical model while

Philo Farnsworth, working independently in San Francisco, and Russian emigrant Vladimir Zworkin, working for Westinghouse and later RCA, advanced the electronic model.

Electronic television systems eventual replaced mechanical systems.

1906 - First Mechanical Television System

Lee de Forest invents the Audion vacuum tube that proved essential to electronics. The Audion was the first tube with the ability to amplify signals.

Boris Rosing combines Nipkow's disk and a cathode ray tube and builds the first working mechanical TV system.

1907 Early Electronic Systems

Campbell Swinton and Boris Rosing suggest using cathode ray tubes to transmit images. Independent of each other, they both develop electronic scanning methods of reproducing images.

1923

Vladimir Zworkin patents his iconscope a TV camera tube based on Campbell Swinton's ideas. The iconscope, which he called an electric eye becomes the cornerstone for further television development. Zworkin later develops the kinescope for picture display (aka the reciever).

1924/25 First Moving Silhouette Images

American Charles Jenkins and John Baird from Scotland, each demonstrate the mechanical transmissions of images over wire circuits.

John Baird becomes the first person to transmit moving silhouette images using a mechanical system based on Nipkow's disk.

Charles Jenkin built his Radiovisor and 1931 and sold it as a kit for consumers to put together (see photo to right).

Vladimir Zworkin patents a color television system.

1926 30 Lines of Resolution

John Baird operates a television system with 30 lines of resolution system running at 5 frames per second.

1927

Bell Telephone and the U.S. Department of Commerce conduct the first long distance use of television that took place between Washington D.C. and New York City on April 9th. Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover commented, “Today we have, in a sense, the transmission of sight for the first time in the world’s history. Human genius has now destroyed the impediment of distance in a new respect, and in a manner hitherto unknown.”

Philo Farnsworth, files for a patent on the first complete electronic television system, which he called the Image Dissector.

1928

The Federal Radio Commission issues the first television station license (W3XK) to Charles Jenkins.

1929

Vladimir Zworkin demonstrates the first practical electronic system for both the transmission and reception of images using his new kinescope tube.

John Baird opens the first TV studio, however, the image quality was poor.

1930

Charles Jenkins broadcasts the first TV commercial.

The BBC begins regular TV transmissions.

1933

Iowa State University (W9XK) starts broadcasting twice weekly television programs in cooperation with radio station WSUI.

1936

About 200 hundred television sets are in use world-wide.

The introduction of coaxial cable, which is a pure copper or copper-coated wire surrounded by insulation and an aluminum covering. These cables were and are used to transmit television, telephone, and data signals.

The first experimental coaxial cable lines were laid by AT&T between New York and Philadelphia in 1936. The first regular installation connected Minneapolis and Stevens Point, WI in 1941.

The original L1 coaxial-cable system could carry 480 telephone conversations or one television program. By the 1970's, L5 systems could carry 132,000 calls or more than 200 television programs.

1937

CBS begins its TV development.

The BBC begins high definition broadcasts in London.

Brothers and Stanford researchers Russell and Sigurd Varian introduce the Klystron. A Klystron is a high-frequency amplifier for generating microwaves. It is considered the technology that makes UHF-TV possible because it gives the ability to generate the high power required in this spectrum.

1939

Vladimir Zworkin and RCA conduct experimentally broadcasts from the Empire State Building.

Television was demonstrated at the New York World's Fair and the San Francisco Golden Gate International Exposition.

RCA's David Sarnoff used his company's exhibit at the 1939 World's Fair as a showcase for the 1st Presidential speech (Roosevelt) on television and to introduce RCA's new line of television receivers, some of which had to be coupled with a radio if you wanted to hear sound.

The Dumont company starts making tv sets.

1940

Peter Goldmark invents a 343 lines of resolution color television system.

1941

The FCC releases the NTSC standard for black and white TV.

1943

Vladimir Zworkin developed a better camera tube called the Orthicon. The Orthicon (see photo right) had enough light sensitivity to record outdoor events at night.

1946

Peter Goldmark, working for CBS, demonstrated his color television system to the FCC. His system produced color pictures by having a red-blue-green wheel spin in front of a cathode ray tube.

This mechanical means of producing a color picture was used in 1949 to broadcast medical procedures from Pennsylvania and Atlantic City hospitals. In Atlantic City, viewers could come to the convention center to see broadcasts of operations. Reports from the time noted that the realism of seeing surgery in color caused more than a few viewers to faint.

Although Goldmark's mechanical system was eventually replaced by an electronic system he is recognized as the first to introduce a broadcasting color television system.

1948

Cable television is introduced in Pennsylvania as a means of bringing television to rural areas.

A patent was granted to Louis W. Parker for a low-cost television receiver.

One million homes in the United States have television sets.

1950

The FCC approves the first color television standard which is replaced by a second in 1953.

Vladimir Zworkin developed a better camera tube called the Vidicon.

1956

Ampex introduces the first practical videotape system of broadcast quality.

Robert Adler invents the first practical remote control called the Zenith Space Commander. It was proceeded by wired remotes and units that failed in sunlight.

1960

The first split screen broadcast occurs on the Kennedy - Nixon debates.

1962

The All Channel Receiver Act requires that UHF tuners (channels 14 to 83) be included in all sets.

1962

AT&T launches Telstar, the first satellite to carry TV broadcasts - broadcasts are now internationally relayed.

1967

Most TV broadcasts are in color.

1969

July 20, first TV transmission from the moon and 600 million people watch.

1972

Half the TVs in homes are color sets.

1973

Giant screen projection TV is first marketed.

1976

Sony introduces betamax, the first home video cassette recorder.

1978

PBS becomes the first station to switch to all satellite delivery of programs.

1981 1,125 Lines of Resolution

NHK demonstrates HDTV with 1,125 lines of resolution.

1982

Dolby surround sound for home sets is introduced.

1983

Direct Broadcast Satellite begins service in Indianapolis, In.

1984

Stereo TV broadcasts approved.

1986

Super VHS introduced.

1993

Closed captioning required on all sets.

1996

The FCC approves ATSC's HDTV standard.

A billion TV sets world-wide.